The side street of Soi Cowboy in Bangkok is frequented by tourists in most times of the year. A walk along the Sukhumvit Road experiences sex tourists and local business man looking for their nightly entertainment. A stop in the makeshift bar witnesses black lights lighting up faces of young girls working hard for a living. Once a customer chooses a particular bar over many others, these young girls hang on the shoulders and waist of older men and then try to get
overpriced drinks bought for them.

I wonder about how old the bar girls are. I have traveled and lived in Asia for a long time. But yet can’t judge the right age of these girls. Asian girls had this way of holding their hands over their mouths to giggle as if they were all fifteen years old, even when they were thirty. Many under aged girls had been trafficked in as slaves. Many come to this profession in their free will.

UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children under eighteen years of age are trafficked every year, with a third of them in Asia. More than thirty million children have been traded in Asia and the Pacific region alone over the last three decades — and the numbers are rising. Most come from the poorer regions of Thailand, the Northeast provinces, where constant droughts and pittance wages force them into the idea of a new life in the big city of Bangkok..